Recently, I found a copy of Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II. It runs fine for me, but my cutscenes are all choppy. They're fine for maybe the first 10 seconds, then the lipsync starts getting behind the audio, then the video constantly pauses to catch up. It makes the videos completely unwatchable. This happens in both the regular game and in the cutscenes menu.

As you can see, my computer ought to be able to handle videos like this correctly. However, it doesn't and so I'm very confused. I've updated using the latest patch (including the "unofficial" one), ran JK in compatibility mode. I've noticed that by alt-tabbing out of the program and back in, the video is synced up, but then it'll get back out of sync within five seconds or so.

Both CD's are scratch free. I also tried using a virtual drive program I have to basically make a image of the CD so I can run it off the hard drive. I still have choppy movies. So it isn't the CD that's the problem. Any other ideas?

Yes, I just installed the latest graphics drivers. Still no luck. I believe my version of Direct X is fine since Windows Update doesn't have a new one available. I did a quick web search and it seems that there are a few other people who experienced the same problem. One such person built a computer similar to mine, leading me to wonder if it is a hardware problem. I'm not quite giving up hope yet.

Yes, I just installed the latest graphics drivers. Still no luck. I believe my version of Direct X is fine since Windows Update doesn't have a new one available. I did a quick web search and it seems that there are a few other people who experienced the same problem. One such person built a computer similar to mine, leading me to wonder if it is a hardware problem. I'm not quite giving up hope yet.

I would have to guess hardware as well, since those videos should play flawlessly

I know I have an old 95 box that can run JK and play those videos fine

good luck finding an answer to the problem

I have no idea what else could cause that

JKLE one of the last active JK and MotS clans out there jkle.jkdf2.netLegends return one last time

I was just coming on here to ask if anyone has a solution to the cutscene issue and I did a search and found this post and I see this person is having the exact same issue that I'm having with the Jedi Knight cutscenes. It also looks as though there has yet to be a solution. Bummer.

Under the burning sun/I take a look around/ Imagine if this all came down/I'm waiting for the day to come

He's a stranger to some and a vision to none/He can never get enough, get enough of the world/For a fortune he'd quit but it's hard to amend/How it ends and begins, on his face is a map of the world

any solution yet? i bought this on steam, was so annoyed about the music i then bought the cd's to go with it, and the cutscenes are choppy . it works fine for about a minute n then its out of sync and then jus pausing every coupole of seconds.

This happens on either the cd install or the steam version. Im on xp with a radeon 9600, i did have the omega drivers but then tried latest offical drivers and no difference used dxdiag to turn off 3d acceleration and also compatibility modes and stil the same.

ANY help or ideas would be great thanks im dying to do these games again.

I have an old Toshiba laptop - I'm playing DF2 for the first time in ages (was missing one of the CD's). I've only played DF2 on 2 computers and they both had problems with at least the 1st cut-scene, where Jerec sends Ran back to the soil. The 1st PC was an ACER with a P166MMX and (eventually) a Voodoo2 card. The rest of the game ran fine, so I didn't mind bad cutscenes (IIRC, everybody hated the cutscenes no matter how they played - I never found out whether those opinions were tempered after finally enduring Phantom Menace).

I'm actually having a problem with gameplay. Not the cutscenes, but the game itself is freezing up. It's rather frustrating because I'd just found the CD's to play both JK & MotS. I'll be between mission objectives or just reaching or having reached an objective and the game freezes up. The weird part is that this is happening on a computer I've played it on for years. It's an XP Laptop (Toshiba P4M) with Geforce 4 Go. In fact between JK & Elite Force, that's pretty much all I do with it. Luckily MotS runs trouble free (except for the fact that it's much harder).

There are some topics already about playing JK/MotS under XP (and probably Vista as well)... I'd check there first. Since I don't have it, I can't say.

If there's a genuine incompatibility, contact LucasArts technical support and perhaps if enough people complain they'll release a patch. After all, they're still selling these games on Steam, and they patched "Outlaws" years ago for precisely this reason.

For me not all of the scenes go choppy, but The Vision does and all of them seem to go out of sync. Do the people having this problem also see large black pixels in the cutscenes, like all over Kyle's white shirt when he first appears in 8t88's Double Cross (and like LawgStreak and rendarknight report)?

Personally I doubt that it's hardware, but for the record I'm on a Dell Latitude D620 laptop, and Device Manager says the video card is an NVIDIA Quadro NVS 110M.

Also for the record, this thread at Steam has more people reporting the choppiness problem.

Be sure you have the official patch and the unofficial patch installed and then try adding the JKE enhanced file, it really improves the appearance and play of JKA. MoTS also has a patch, they should play decently, dont know about what they did to make it work for Steam, if they upgraded the files at all. JK Enhanced is found here:

Agreed, the cut scenes should work with a full install. You may have a damaged disk. Even with a good install I still get black spots on my cutscenes.

I'm having trouble parsing exactly what you're saying, but corrupted game data is much less likely to cause symptoms like these than a hardware or software conflict. Steam's "verify integrity of game cache" option button reports that the data's fine. Is anyone running JK on XP not having the problem?

Edits:

The MAZZter suggests trying different versions of SMACKW32.DLL to see if one helps, but I don't know how to find a trustworthy place to download them from.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thunderforge

I did that and played the videos. Unfortunately, they were still choppy using those tools.

For me the cutscenes still go out-of-sync with RAD Tools, but they don't get choppy like they do in JK.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Document2

Do the people having this problem also see large black pixels in the cutscenes

It turns out that the black pixels don't appear in windowed mode, only in full screen; judging by that, they're probably a separate problem and off-topic for this thread.